A Distant Beacon was set up in 2001 to publish re:VOX, an Ultravox (and related artists) magazine. Since then I've become involved in a number of other projects, some of which are directly related to A Distant Beacon, some of which not so much. The aim of this blog is to bring all my various activities under one (electronic) roof!

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Saturday, 10 December 2016

Apologies it’s taken me a few months more than expected to conjure up a few choice morsels to whet
appetites further for what’s to come in From Cents to Pence!, so without further ado lets whizz back a few months once again...

ON
JOINING MARVEL...

Neil Tennant:
This is all such a long time ago, it was literally forty years ago.

Rob Kirby:
Yes, it hadn’t really struck me until you said it. A quick question to start
with. Had it always been you’re intention to go into journalism?

Neil:
No, it hadn’t. My long term plan in life… well, I had two parallel plans. One
was to become a successful song-writer and pop star, kind of thing, but I
recognised that that was a difficult thing and an unlikely thing to achieve,
and so I did my degree in History. I realised I was going to get some job, but
my initial thought when I finished my degree was to do post-graduate [studies],
an MA maybe. But, as you [say]… All the way through this period at Marvel and
indeed through MacDonald Educational I’m also writing songs at home, y’know;
little cassette demos of them. And I was always interested in music, and so I
did vaguely think that I would like to be a music journalist because I was just
so interested in music and rock music and all the rest of it. But anyway, as
you accurately say, right when I finished my degree, a friend of mine who was a
mature student – I should say in her thirties – she’d been a journalist
in Fleet Street, used to get the UK Press Gazette and pointed out this advert
saying ‘Production Editor needed for Marvel Comics’. And she said ‘If you were
ever thinking of going into journalism, which I must have said to her, this
looks to me the sort of job that’d be a great beginning’.

Rob:
This is always the thing, isn’t it… [getting that first foothold].

Neil:
I went in and Ray Wergan interviewed me and they offered me the job, and so
three weeks, I think, after I finished my degree, I had a job. I took the
degree in June and by the beginning of July I had a job at Marvel Comics!
(Laughs) As I always said to him, ‘I still haven’t had the cap yet!’ (more
laughter). I knew Marvel Comics because, in the late Sixties I think, there was
a different British version of Marvel.

Rob:
Yeah, the Power Comics.

Neil:
Yup. And my brother Simon used to buy them, but I used to read them. They were
sort of quite a thing if you were sort of thirteen/fourteen in the late
Sixties. There were quite a few of them I used to read. So that was my real
introduction to Marvel Comics.

Rob:
So, it was always on the British side, not on the American side, y’know, the
American imports as well?

Neil:
No, you might see American comics occasionally. The newsagent would have a
sporadic distribution of them, y’know, up in Newcastle.

Rob:
Exactly. Which was, of course, their whole reason for eventually setting up [in
this country] rather than licensing, as you’ve mentioned, through the Power
Comics or TV21.

Neil:
Yes, yes. What happened to Power Comics? Did they go down the pan?

Rob:
They did, yes. They had a huge explosion… they probably put out too many
titles, the pound dropped, so they merged and merged and then stopped. They
then put some stuff in TV21, again to save an ailing comic, and again that
didn’t work…

Neil:
TV21. We [referring to his brother, who bought the comic and shared it with him] used to love TV21. Yup.

ON
HIS ROCK INTERVIEWS...

Neil: I
realised quite early on that the production thing was a bit boring, but it had
to be done, obviously. But I could use the fact (laughs) of supposedly being
editor of the Marvel London operation to pursue my own objectives, which were
to write articles myself and to put them in there, particularly to do with
music, and also maybe there could be a comic originated from there. Which I
felt would be a really interesting thing to do. Alex Harvey had had
comics’ graphics on at least one of his album covers and so he did the
interview, and I tried to get one with Paul and Linda McCartney, but they
wouldn’t do it. And I also tried to get one with the Bay City Rollers, who were
also Marvel Comic fans, but they wouldn’t do it either.

Rob:
We wondered if you were latterly going to try and arrange another interview
with Marc Bolan around the time of his TV show, a couple of months’ before he
died.

Neil:
No, I wasn’t there then, I’d moved on. I was at MacDonald Educational by then.
And we also only really needed one, I think, although I think Marc Bolan did
suggest that he’d quite like to write a comic, but I don’t think I ever took
that seriously. But he was a very sweet person, Marc Bolan. It was the first
time I’d done an interview, bearing in mind I went on to edit Smash Hits, and I
went to his publicists’ office in Earls Court, with a cassette recorder that
Alan in the office had lent me. And we started talking by a table in this room
and I turned on the cassette recorder and then we sat on the sofa and I just
left the cassette recorder there. And Marc Bolan obviously thought I was an
idiot (laughter) and he walked across the room, got the tape recorder, walked
back across the room, put it between us, like ‘this is what you do’! And it was
very, very sweet of him. One of my few regrets of my life is that he gave me a
copy of the album Futuristic Dragon, and I was too cool to ask him to sign it.

Rob:
(laughs)

Neil:
And, to this day, I bitterly regret that I do not have a copy of this album
that says ‘To Neil, Love Marc’, because I still like T-Rex’s records, y’know.

ON
MARVEL IN AMERICA...

Neil:
I was astonished that you’d spoken to people in the American office, and they’d
said such nice things about these nice English guys. I had no idea what they
thought of us, really (laughs). They probably thought I was a bit of a pain
because I was relentlessly complaining about Captain Britain. Marvel in
the US was… You must remember in these days, phoning up New York in the
afternoon was like phoning up the moon!

Rob:
Hmmmm!

Neil:
I mean, this wasn’t the period when everyone had been to New York and America
several times – no one had been to America. America was a sort of dream land.
And so to phone up Cadence Communications in New York in the afternoon, and get
through to whoever I had to talk to, it was incredibly exotic. It actually was
thrilling, to be honest. Phoning up New York, and saying ‘Sorry, I’m on the
phone to New York’ (laughter all round). Y’know, I was only 21, so it was
really like phoning up the moon! (chuckles) And I was interested to see again,
in your book, that you’ve spoken to the American guys.

Rob:
Hmmm, oh yes!

Neil:
And we did have this thing where they would occasionally send me a record.
Because in those days, of course, a record could come out in America that
didn’t come out in Britain.

Rob:
Of exactly, well that’s still the case now [to a lesser degree].

Neil:
And so they sent a single by Bob Dylan that I really wanted called ‘Hurricane’,
which wasn’t available in Britain, it wasn’t released, and it came over by the
courier. And then I bought them a Mike Oldfield single.

Incidentally,
Jim Salicrup still remembers that copy of Don Alfonso that Neil sent him!

I stupidly managed to delete the original column I posted under this heading back on September 30th, so here it is again - thank god for internet caching!

I may try writing comments off site in future and then pasting them in at the end to avoid draft versions.

Technology, don't talk to me about technology ;)

It was 44
years today, that
the smilin' one had his say...

On the
30th September 1972 something special happened, and I'm not the only one who
feels that way! A drought was ended. For almost year, bar a solitary Annual, no
regular weekly comic in Britain had contained any Marvel reprints, but with the
arrival of The Mighty World of Marvel everything changed. And that instant hit
quickly birthed a line of comics that by 1976 had surpassed the number of
titles that their predecessor Odhams had grouped together under the Power
Comics banner back in the late 1960s.

There was
something in that blend of artwork and story craft that appealed to me in a way
that no indigenous comic had ever done. I'd read comics for years, but as a
regular reader and no more, moving from the Pippin to TV Comic to Tiger and
Scorcher and briefly Look-In, taking the same sort of age progressive steps
between titles as was expected of most readers. But the US titles weren't
written that way, and the artwork was wildly different too. But even so, that
expectation that eventually you'd switch from reading the UK weeklies to
collecting the US colour monthlies when you were older was still there, as much
amongst some fans as it was in the plans of Dez Skinn when he took over the UK
wing in late 1978. But I'd become too loyal to the UK titles, so as they
expanded and diversified into pocket books and monthly magazines, and then ever
greater origination (for a time), I kept buying them alongside a small
selection of US comics that seemed unlikely to ever see print over here, and
many years into the Panini era nothing has changed.

This perspective,
and a collection to fall back on, eventually took me down the path of first
indexing what had been published, both reprinted and originated, and then -
with a few prods - looking ever deeper into the story behind Marvel's British
division, and then in the wider context of their relationship with Marvel in
America, as well as Marvel's many appearances in British comics before the
Mighty World of Marvel commenced, dating as far back as 1951.

Along
this journey it's been my privilege to talk to some fascinating creative people
from many different walks of life - writers, editorial, artists, editors,
production artists amongst them - and almost every discovery then led to an
even more surprising one. I'd always hoped to speak to Ray Wergan, but he'd long
retired from his business, Transworld (UK) Ltd., from which those early British
Marvel comics had issued forth, so finding Ray in 2011 was a huge joy. What he
told me then led to the Stan Lee archives housed at Wyoming University, and
with all this information I was then able to construct a much more detailed
picture of life in the UK Bullpen. This helped enormously when I then located
two of their early editors - Peta Skingley and Maureen Softley - as the more
information you have to begin with the more it helps to spark long-buried
recollections and revelations.

But there
have always been others that I'd still like to speak to, and looming high on
that list was the one man that almost everyone I've come into contact with has
asked about at some stage. As of Monday this week, as those of you who follow
me on Facebook will already know, I can now answer that query in the
affirmative, as it was my huge pleasure to chat at length with Neil Tennant
about his time at the British Marvel tiller. Having sent him copious extracts
selected out of the drafts from From Cents to Pence!, and aided by
some additional questions (okay, two pages of questions and factual prompts!),
this hugely helped the conversation zero in on specific areas where Neil had
more to say. I've yet to transcribe the tape - hey, it's been a busy week at
work too (especially having had Monday off to conduct the phone interview) -
but I can tell you that there are some very interesting new revelations and
additions to come.

Oh, and
he's every bit as charming, funny and insightful as any interview you've ever
seen or heard. And well-prepared too. Not only had he clearly gone to the
trouble of carefully studying the extracts I'd sent over, but he'd checked back
through his earliest diaries to see what he'd written during the last few
months before he left Marvel for MacDonald Educational Books. Now that's class!
I must admit that I'd never thought I'd get the opportunity, and it's thanks to
an unexpected set of circumstances that it happened at all, so I was hugely
grateful that Neil was happy to spend so much time speaking about his early
career with such candour and humour.

It's
strange, but had I spoken to Neil before 2011, long before all the information
I spoke about above came to light, I very much doubt that our chat would have
been as long or as detailed. It does sometimes feel that I've been led on a
certain path in completing this work. So, once I've looped back to add in and
contextualise these latest findings, I will return to revising and updating the
remaining few chapters - sorely neglected after half a decade spent on a period
spanning 1960-1981, but most specifically within that period 1970-1979.

I'd love to say that I will be finished by the
end of the year, but I'm sure you'll forgive me if work leaks into the New Year
a bit further than planned!

Thursday, 8 December 2016

Not every creative genius has lost an ear in pursuit of their art, of course.But that header above is not a cryptic crossword clue. This is my attempt to help Andrew Thomas and Toby Gleason realise their dream of releasing their long-awaited feature length documentary: The Anatomy of Vince Guaraldi.I've long had more than a soft-spot for the music of Vince Guaraldi. There's a cliche about his work, but it's very true: he's the jazz great whose work you've doubtless heard but never connected to him... that is, unless you've never seen any of the first fifteen Charlie Brown animated shows that he scored from 1965 until his death from an aortic aneurysm in 1976, hours after completing the recording session for It's Arbor Day, Charlie Brown. Or more precisely heard. Guaraldi's sound, and his style of keyboard playing, is entirely unique to him Once heard, never forgotten.I suppose its possible that you might not have heard his music, but I find it unlikely seeing as his scores include the very first instalment - the ubiquitous A Charlie Brown Christmas (which still packs a punch today in even more commercialised times) - through such other classics as It's a Mystery, Charlie Brown; You're not Elected, Charlie Brown; It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (surely responsible for introducing the 'trick or treat' concept to Britain);You're a Good Sport, Charlie Brown and A Charlie Brown Valentine, amongst other classics.Vince didn't travel much when he toured, preferring residencies at local San Franciscan jazz hang-outs, although his music certainly has done over the years, thanks predominantly to those early cartoon shows. And it's perhaps for that reason that he isn't more well-known beyond the jazz cognoscenti and Peanuts nuts. He's also been poorly treated on record, in some respects.Although the majority of Guaraldi's albums, both solo and collaborative, have stayed in print on one format or another, it's only in the last decade or so that more compilations have finally started to appear on CD, mopping up other selections of music taken from surviving original masters from the TV recording sessions. These have been haphazard at best, and not always correctly annotated at that, leading to further confusion, but they have coughed up some surprises. Having researched all of his TV scores earlier this year to satisfy my own curiosity on the matter, and to try and pin down the exact episodes that the music on all these CDs actually featured on, I've discovered two other albums whose bonus tracks were previously unknown to have also featured a cue each that belonged to the TV shows.Until now, there's been almost no way to actually watch Guaraldi in action, either, apart from one mid-1960s episode of Jazz critic Ralph Gleason's own San Francisco-based cable TV show Jazz Casual which eventually escaped on to DVD a few years' back. And with the original 1962 B&W documentary The Anatomy of a Hit, filmed following the breakthrough chart success of his classic Cast Your Fate to the Wind, thought lost until fairly recently, it looked like the half hour 'featurette' about Vince on the Peanuts 1960's Collection DVD - The Maestro of Menlo Park - was going to be the only place to hear those who had worked with him talk about Guaraldi.This newly expanded version of Anatomy that Thomas and Gleason have loving constructed in their own time, and without any sponsorship or commercial support, includes many new interviews with the likes of Dave Brubeck, Lee Mendleson, Dick Gregory and Charles Gompertz, as well as "an eclectic group of musicians, artists and social activists", all integrated into the original footage from 1962. So far only screened to rapturous audiences at a few arts and jazz festivals, the film promises, says Thomas and Gleason (Ralph's son), to showcase "never-before-seen" performances, with "a soundtrack constructed from previously unheard material gleaned from Vince's live and private studio recordings". It's a mouth-watering prospect when they state that "you won't hear or see this anywhere else".

What they need now is the money to pay for the remaining music clearances to enable the film to be released at last, which is where you come in. If you like jazz music, then this is definitely a worthy cause worth supporting via their Kickstarter campaign (link below).There's now just ten days to go until the funding rally ends on the 19th at 7.59am, so please spread this post, and maybe we can all make this a really Charlie Brown Christmas!!https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/487615092/the-anatomy-of-vince-guaraldi

About Me

A busy designer and writer, for the past two decades Rob's been researching an in-depth book on Marvel UK, and since 2001 has also been running re:VOX, a magazine concerning everything to do with the group Ultravox.